Clear and Present Danger

This article appeared in “The Atlantic” on August 5, 2022

Civil war is among the many terms we now use too easily. The American Civil War was a bloodbath driven by the inevitable confrontation between the Union and the organized forces of sedition and slavery. But at least the Civil War, as I said Friday on Morning Joe during a panel on political violence in America, was about something. Compared with the bizarre ideas and half-baked wackiness that now infest American political life, the arguments between the North and the South look like a deep treatise on government.

The United States now faces a different kind of violence, from people who believe in nothing—or at least, in nothing real. We do not risk the creation of organized armies and militias in Virginia or Louisiana or Alabama marching on federal institutions. Instead, all of us face random threats and unpredictable dangers from people among us who spend too much time watching television and plunging down internet rabbit holes. These people, acting individually or in small groups, will be led not by rebel generals but by narcissistic wannabe heroes, and they will be egged on by cowards and instigators who will inflame them from the safety of a television or radio studio—or from behind the shield of elected office. Occasionally, they will congeal into a mob, as they did on January 6, 2021.

There is no single principle that unites these Americans in their violence against their fellow citizens. They will tell you that they are for “liberty” and “freedom,” but these are merely code words for personal grudges, racial and class resentments, and a generalized paranoia that dark forces are manipulating their lives. These are not people who are going to take up the flag of a state or of a deeper cause; they have already taken up the flag of a failed president, and their causes are a farrago of conspiracy theories and pulpy science-fiction plots.

What makes this situation worse is that there is no remedy for it. When people are driven by fantasies, by resentment, by an internalized sense of inferiority, there is no redemption in anything. Winning elections, burning effigies, even shooting at other citizens does not soothe their anger but instead deepens the spiritual and moral void that haunts them.

Donald Trump is central to this fraying of public sanity, because he has done one thing for such people that no one else could do: He has made their lives interesting. He has made them feel important. He has taken their itching frustrations about the unfairness of life and created a morality play around them, and cast himself as the central character. Trump, to his supporters, is the avenging angel who is going to lay waste to the “elites,” the smarty-pantses and do-gooders, the godless and the smug, the satisfied and the comfortable.

I spoke with one of the original Never Trumpers over the weekend, a man who has lost friends and family because of his opposition to Trump, and he told me that one of the most unsettling things to him is that these same pro-Trump family and friends now say that they believe that Trump broke the law—but that they don’t care. They see Trump and his crusade—their crusade against evil, the drama that gives their lives meaning—as more important than the law.

I have heard similar sentiments among people I know.

Some of these people are ready to snap and to resort to violence. A Navy veteran in Ohio was killed in a standoff last week after he attacked the Cincinnati FBI office; a man in Pennsylvania was arrested and charged today for threatening to “slaughter” federal agents, whom he called “police state scum.” But that doesn’t stop charlatans and con artists from throwing matches at the fuses every day, because those hucksters, too, have decided that living a normal life and working a straight job is for saps. They will gladly risk the occasional explosion here and there if it means living the good life off of donations and purchases from their marks.

When enough Americans decide that a cult of personality matters more than a commitment to democracy, we risk becoming a lawless autocracy. This is why we must continue to demand that Trump and his enablers face the consequences of their actions: To cave in the face of threats means the end of democracy. And it would not, in any event, mollify those among our fellow citizens who have chosen to discard the Constitution so that they can keep mainlining jolts of drama from morning until night.

We are going to be living in this era of political violence for the foreseeable future. All any of us can do is continue, among our friends and family and neighbors, to say and defend what is right in the face of lies and delusions.

Why would Trump have highly classified documents about nuclear weapons in his possession?  Let’s remember:

• Trump and his disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pushed and pushed and pushed to provide nuclear design information to Saudi Arabia.
• As Trump was leaving the White House, the Saudis made a $2 billion investment in Jared Kushner’s newly-formed investment fund, in spite of the fact that Kushner had no experience in managing such funds.

Maybe this photo taken recently at Trump’s Bedminster NJ golf club explains things.

According to Trump all of the “best people” that he appointed, hired, and/or surrounded himself with turned out – according to him – to be incompetent liars who were “out to get him”.

Putting aside everything else about Trump (which is a LOT), you’d think that fact alone would be enough to make reasonably intelligent people go “hmmm”.

But the people that Trump hired turned out to be Kool-Aid swilling idiots who believe that JFK Jr. will be Trump’s running mate in 2024, that the 2020 election will be overturned by SCOTUS after Mike Pillow provides his evidence, and that the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop holds the information that will prove Joe Biden is the head of an international cabal of pedophiles who have been running the governments of every nation on earth for decades.

Trump’s entire life and reputation, as well as his non-fortune have been built on bluff, bluster, lies, bank loans, and fraud.  He has been able to get away with it to this point because it simply has not been worth the trouble to fight him in court.  Now, however, Trump’s string has run out — while a contractor or a local government may not have the resources to run him down, the federal government does have the resources, the time, and the people.  He is trapped.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson has released an excellent summary of what this week (August 8 – 12) means to Trump and to our nation.

Since Monday’s search of former president Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property by the FBI, Trump, Trump supporters, and right-wing media have all been accusing the government of executing a political vendetta and speculating that FBI agents might have planted evidence on the property.

This afternoon, Attorney General Merrick Garland gave a brief press conference in which he announced that the unjustified attacks on the Department of Justice (DOJ) have led it to file a motion to unseal the search warrant the FBI used and a redacted version of the receipt for the things removed from the premises. He also confirmed that copies of the warrant and the property receipt were left with Trump, as regulations require. Had Trump wanted to release them, he could have…and he still can, at any time.

Contrary to right-wing reports, Trump’s lawyer was at Mar-a-Lago during the search, which a federal court authorized after finding probable cause. Garland said that he personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant, and he also pointed out that the Department of Justice did not publicize the search; the former president did. Because of the public interest in the matter—and to clear up confusion over it—the department is asking a judge to unseal the documents.

Garland also defended FBI agents against attacks on them, saying, “The men and women of the FBI and the Justice Department are dedicated, patriotic public servants. Every day they protect the American people from violent crime, terrorism, and other threats to their safety while safeguarding our civil rights. They do so at great personal sacrifice and risk to themselves.”

Garland explained the principle at stake. “Faithful adherence to the rule of law is the bedrock principle of the Justice Department and of our democracy. Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly, without fear or favor. Under my watch that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing. All Americans are entitled to the evenhanded application of the law, to due process of the law, and to the presumption of innocence.”

He also reminded people that “the Department of Justice will speak through its court filings and its work.”

The DOJ motion to unseal the search warrant tells us a bit more. It was signed by U.S. Attorney Juan Gonzalez and by Jay Bratt, the chief of the department’s counterintelligence section. The motion also throws the ball into Trump’s court, saying “the former President should have an opportunity to respond to this Motion and lodge objections….” This boxes Trump in. He and his supporters have been demanding the documents be released, although  the DOJ cannot release them and Trump can. This motion means that the DOJ has made a strong case to get permission to release them…unless Trump objects. Essentially, the DOJ just called his bluff.

At the New York Times, Katie Benner reported that already “Trump allies are discussing the possibility of challenging the Justice Department’s motion to unseal the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. They have contacted outside lawyers about helping them.”

This should play out quickly: a judge this afternoon (Thursday, August 11) told the DOJ to discuss with Trump’s lawyer whether Trump objects to unsealing the documents and to let the judge know by 3:00 tomorrow afternoon (Friday, August 12). Tonight, Trump said he would not oppose the document’s release, but he didn’t release them himself, so we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Another right-wing talking point about the search fell apart today as well. Fox News Channel personalities have argued that the Justice Department should simply have issued a subpoena for the material. “Get a subpoena, he will give it back,” Jesse Watters said. “It’s not like Trump won’t cooperate.” But in fact it turns out the DOJ did deliver a subpoena two months ago, and the former president did not comply.

For all the loud protests of Trump supporters over the search, other Republicans—even ones who were previously Team Trump—seem to be backing away. Today, Fox News Channel contributor and former White House press secretary for President George W. Bush Ari Fleischer tweeted: “One thing I can’t wrap my arms around: If Trump had classified documents, why didn’t he give them back? Maybe he thought they were declassified. Maybe he thought it was government overreach. But if, for whatever reason, you have a classified document at home, you give it back.”

For his part, Trump tried to suggest his own retention of documents was not nearly as bad as that of former president Barack Obama, who, Trump alleged, took “33 Million pages of documents…to Chicago.” He is referring to the materials for the Obama presidential library, which have been moved from the National Archives and Records Administration with its permission and cooperation.

Tonight, Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey, Perry Stein, and Shane Harris at the Washington Post broke the story that the FBI agents at Mar-a-Lago were looking for documents relating to nuclear weapons, underscoring that the search was imperative. We don’t know any more than that, and heaven knows that’s bad enough. 

But what springs to mind for me is the plan pushed by Trump’s first national security advisor, Michael Flynn, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and fundraiser and campaign advisor Tom Barrack, to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. In 2019, whistleblowers from the National Security Council worried that their efforts might have broken the law and that the effort to make the transfer was ongoing. The plan was to enable Saudi leaders to build nuclear power plants, a plan that would have yielded billions of dollars to the investors but would have allowed Saudi Arabia to build nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, Zachary Cohen, Jamie Gangel, Sara Murray, and Pamela Brown of CNN report that the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol has interviewed the former secretary of transportation in the Trump administration, Elaine Chao, and is in discussions with former education secretary Betsy DeVos and former national security advisor Robert O’Brien. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo met with the committee on Tuesday. At least nine Cabinet-level officials either have talked to the committee or are negotiating the terms of interviews. One of the topics has been the attempt to remove Trump through the 25th Amendment after the events of January 6.

The lies about the FBI and the January 6th attack on the Capitol came together today and took a life. Ricky Walter Shiffer, who appears to have been at the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, shot into the FBI field office in Cincinnati with a nail gun this morning while brandishing an AR-15-style weapon. After the attack, he took refuge in a cornfield, where law enforcement officers killed him this afternoon.

Trump’s reason for appropriating U.S. secrets is far beyond simply hiding evidence.

Trump thought he could take his lifelong criminal behavior into the Presidency and not suffer the consequences —  as he has done his entire life. Trump has survived without being imprisoned by draining investigative and prosecutorial resources with endless appeals and paying millions of dollars in tribute (fines) instead of going to jail. He made it too expensive for prosecutors to pursue, so they settled for massive fines.  It’s a strategy taught to him by Roy Cohen and his stable of NYC crime bosses.

We’ll look at a brief history of Trump’s documented lifetime of criminality, including deep ties with Russian Oligarch Mobsters over decades, allowing him to think that he could also get away with it as President. Then we’ll explain why Trump is holding classified information for his own purposes.

If you’re already familiar with Trump’s history of illegality and don’t want to read about a few choice examples of the following:

• how Trump began his life of criminality at the age of thirteen,
• how Roy Cohn and his stable of NYC mobsters groomed Trump,
• how Trump admitted to using bribery as a strategy,
• how Rod Rosenstein curtailed the Mueller Investigation and the FBI’s investigation,
• how Trump’s Taj Mahal was the Russian Mob’s favorite East Coast destination,
• how Scotland is still considering investigating Trump for money laundering,
• how Trump recruited Russian media consultants to work on his 2016 campaign,
• and how Trump University and the Trump Foundation were shuttered by the court…

… skip to this page for a detailed description of Trump’s life of crime. 

If that whiny sound emanating from so many elected Republican officials sounds familiar, it should. It’s the same high-pitched squeal a balloon emits when you carefully let its air out between your compressed fingers. Republicans have been living in that balloon for so long, they pretty much forgot the fact that the balloon existed in the first place.

Balloons are different than bubbles. You can live in a bubble and not really know you’re in it. When you’re in a balloon, though, you know damn well where you are. You just get used to breathing the same air over and over again until it seems normal.

So here’s a little wake-up call for those former balloon dwellers. Donald Trump is, was, and for the better part of his life always has been, a criminal. The fact that Republicans willingly put him into high office doesn’t make him any less of a criminal. The funny thing is — they knew he was a criminal from the start. They just didn’t care.

For Christ’s sake, this is the guy who bilked young people out of their hard-earned savings with his fake “university.” The same guy who bankrupted his casinos like clockwork and stiffed contractors and other folks he hired as a point of pride.  Who grossly inflated his real estate holdings and refused to turn over his taxes. Who routinely sexually assaulted and harassed women. And that was all before Republicans thought it was a great idea to make him president, whereupon he proceeded to turn the Emoluments Clause into a sick joke.

We all know what he did afterwards. He, his cronies and his repulsive family bent over backwards to engage the assistance of the bloodthirsty dictator now waging an unprovoked war against Ukraine. Then he tried to extort Ukraine itself by trying to hold up weapons shipments until Ukraine’s president concocted a phony story smearing Joe Biden’s son. When Joe Biden then crushed him in the general election he summoned America’s very worst specimens to start a riot in an effort to overturn that election’s result. His excuse (for all the others in his balloon) was a phony assertion of “fraud,” which must have been a neat trick since the so-called “fraud” applied only to him, and not to everyone else who shared a space on the same optically-scanned ballot.

In short, this guy is a seasoned criminal, with a mindset to match, through and through. His relatives know it, his former flunkies and button men know it. And the truth is, Republicans know it too. They knew it from the very moment they inflicted him on the rest of us.

I don’t know what’s in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s files about this guy’s dealings, but I have a strong hunch Garland wouldn’t take the unprecedented step of raiding the Florida house of a former president unless something considerably more serious than a breach in archival practices was going on. Based on Trump’s track record with fomenting sedition and fellating foreign dictators I’d be surprised if it wasn’t outright treachery. I guess we’ll find that out soon enough.

But in the meantime, spare us the phony outrage and the “government overreach” bullshit. Spare us the “third-world country” garbage. Is this really how you raise your children, to turn a blind eye to the legal process? To scam others for pleasure, to lie, cheat and steal? To sell out their country? Is that what you’re really all about? At long last, I guess, you really had no sense of decency.

You Republicans have had it really good in that balloon. You could keep getting yourselves elected by just by pretending this guy wasn’t a walking nightmare of racism, cruelty, immorality, and greed. In fact you got so used to breathing his air in that balloon, you became just like him. Parroting the Big Lie, all while nuzzling up to the trough. Winking at obvious treachery.  Can you imagine — even for a second — what your reaction would have been had Barack Obama demonstrated even the tiniest fraction of Donald Trump’s venality? You would have been calling for his head on a platter, and probably every other Democrats’ as well.

No, the reason you can’t imagine that is because it would never happen. Because while you’ve been in that balloon, breathing in each others’ air, day after day, year after year, the rest of us have been outside, just shaking our heads in disbelief at the fact that you treated a thoroughly rotten human being like some sort of deity, just because he hated on the same people you hate.  That’s really kind of sick, but, hey, it’s your balloon.

Please, though, don’t give us the theatrical “surprised” or “shocked” routine. You’re not surprised or shocked. You knew what this guy was about when you signed on. Spare us the haughty, holier-than-thou crap about how it’s a “dark day for the rule of law.”  You’ve shown us all through your behavior and slavish sycophancy that you really don’t give a damn about “law.”  That ship sailed a long, long time ago.

Yes, Republicans are making an awful noise right now. But when you get right down to it, it’s all just the same hot air they’ve been breathing for the last five years.